10/27/2007 (1:21 pm)

Update: Someone used this guide on their 1.1.2 iPhone before reading that the guide was intended for 1.1.1. They reported that it worked perfectly fine. I’ve updated the guide to reflect this.

This guide will explain how to set custom carrier icons on your 1.1.1 or 1.1.2 iPhone to replace that boring AT&T logo…

If you are using a carrier other than AT&T then you’ll most likely see part of the carrier name with the end cut off. I have Rogers for example. All I would see before I set my custom logo was ROG… which was not very nice to look at. Since the iPhone is all about the eye candy, you can use the following steps to set a custom carrier icon.

Make sure that you have the AppTap installer installed on your phone.

Open the AppTap installer.

Install “Community Sources” if it is not already installed.

Navigate to the Utilities section.

Install “Customize”

Navigate to the “Themes (Customize)” section and install the “Default Image Set” and the “Designer Image Set” (Note: you can install others as well if you wish).

If you are using AT&T as your carrier then you can simply launch Customize from the home screen, navigate to the Carrier Image section and select an alternate carrier image. If you are not using AT&T as your carrier then you will need to use the following steps to have the carrier icon display.

Download the original version of SpringBoard located at /System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app/SpringBoard on the iPhone and save it somewhere on your computer as a backup in case anything goes wrong. If for whatever reason you did not back up the original SpringBoard file before overwriting you can download it from here.

Upload the patched version of SpringBoard to /System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app/SpringBoard and overwrite the original.

If you have SummerBoard installed you can go to SMBPrefs from the home screen and click on the Restart SpringBoard button at the bottom. If you do not have SummerBoard installed simply restart the phone.

Once SpringBoard has been restarted using one of the methods detailed in the last step, you should be able to launch Customize from the home screen and select a custom carrier icon.

The custom carrier icon should now be displayed in the place of the standard carrier icon.

You are able to upload custom carrier icons to /var/root/Library/Customize/CarrierImages/Default. Make sure that the images follow the Customize file naming convention (check other carrier icons stored in this location for reference). The icons will then be available for selection in Customize. You are also able to upload custom icons directly to /System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app/ and replace the files Default_CARRIER_ATT.png and FSO_CARRIER_ATT.png (if you don’t want to use Customize for some reason). For all of you Canadian iPhone users out there, here are some Rogers carrier icons which can be loaded on to the iPhone using the methods detailed above. These can also be used by anyone as a reference for designing your own custom carrier icons (as the images must be a specific width and height to work).